


more to it than science

by HeavensArcher



Series: Jaegercon Bingo [23]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 18:45:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeavensArcher/pseuds/HeavensArcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"the drift" fill. The drift couldn't be explained in terms of science. There was more to it than that. More than the pilots would ever tell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	more to it than science

(the drift)

The drift was something even the scientists didn’t fully understand. Not for lack of trying of course. They knew how it worked, how to initiate it, how to cut it off, some of what passed through but…some things you just needed to experience yourself. You could understand exactly how falling occurred, all the forces that acting on you, how it felt. But you would never fully appreciate how falling felt unless you yourself fell.

The pilots didn’t talk about the drift. The drift was personal. It was raw and painful and beautiful and gorgeous and the most real thing anyone would ever feel. The pilots with the strongest drifts would be able to tell you exactly how it felt. How it because impossible to tell whose thought was whose, who it was that broke their arm at nine and who it was that had lost their virginity under the bleaches. How the best drifts weren’t the best because the pilots were able to work together in unison, but because their minds became one mass of emotionsthoughtsmemories and stayed that way.

The reason the pilots stayed so close to each other after a drift was that feeling that disappear and suddenly having your mind back as yours was disorientating, upsetting and you felt so so alone. So alone in your mind which seemed so small and so big all at once and the closer you were to your partner, the stronger the ghost drift felt. The more together you felt until you felt more yourself again.

You knew everything about each other, the past, present, hopes of the future. Every errant thought, both good and bad, and you accepted them for everything. All their faults, all their shining qualities mixed into a big mass of grey. Accepted without judgement, as they did the same for you.

No one that hadn’t drifted, that hadn’t experienced that oneness, would ever understand how that felt. That was why the pilots didn’t try to explain it to anyone. They knew. That was all that mattered.

(Pilots rarely take another partner after their first. You fight together and you either die together or retire together. To them there was no other option. More than one set of partners mourned for Raleigh and his brother Yancy when Gipsy fell. More than one set were horrified when they found out they’d saved Raleigh. That he hadn’t died. He’d crashed more than once, but they always brought him back.

Why did they bring him back? Why would they do that?)


End file.
